"To lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth ... Whereon the pillars of this earth are founded, toward which the conscience of the world is tending ... a wind is rising, and the rivers flow."
— Thomas WolfeYou Can't Go Home AgainRecovery continues. As things get back to normal, we are forced to constantly readjust our definition of "normal". Spring is here. Another rebirth, another opportunity to make ourselves over, anew, to give up old habits, to change our diet, to start afresh. The crocus pops it's head up. Several weeks ago, I went back home to Georgia. I spent ten days with my parents. My mother had open heart surgery. A double bypass. I sat by her side and got water and juice for her. I sketched her some. She clasped the soft pillow to her chest when she coughed or laughed. I realized that I'd never spent time alone with my parents. When I was growing up my brother and sister were around but my parents weren't. As a teenager, my parents were around, but I wasn't. I got married at 18 and moved away. Melonie and the boys and I have only gone down for quick trips on holidays. So, I realized that I'd never spent time alone with my parents. It was very rewarding. My parents love was unconditional, they just loved the fact that I'd come to visit, that I'd taken the time to just come and sit beside my mother. After I adjusted to the pace, I took great joy in just sitting and talking and occasionally drawing my mother as she slept. All I had to do to receive their undivided appreciation and love was to be there, to just sit and be myself. My mother is doing fine. I am thankful for this. May 4th brings my next show at PPOW in New York. It is a Saturday opening. I am not ready. I am still busy preparing, always feeling like the perfect painting is the next one, surely if I can do just one more then, I'll get it, I'll grasp the elusive vague longing. But mainly, I'm hoping that all the work will sit well together once it is assembled. The paintings were done over the past two years and most have never met face to face. And I hope that everyone will come, you, my friends, the collectors and museum folk ... oh, and the critics? Well, I hope they'll take this opportunity to go visit their long neglected parents! Speaking of critics and the like, I am reminded of another all time favorite excerpt from You Can't Go Home Again. "The highest intelligence of the time- the very subtlest of the chosen few — were bored by many things. They tilled the wasteland, and erosion had grown fashionable. They were bored with love, and they were bored with hate. They were bo red with men who worked, and they were bored by men who loafed. They were bored by men who created something, and with people who created nothing. they were bored with marriage,and with single blessedness. They were bored with chastity, and they were bored with adultery. They were bored with going abroad, and they were bored with staying at home. They were bored with the great poets of the world, whose great poems they had never read. They were bored with hunger in the streets, with the men who were killed, with the children who starved, and with the injustice, freedom and man's right to live. they were bored with living, they were bored with dying, but — they were not bored that year with Mr. Piggy Logan and his circus of wire dolls." Have a good Spring!
Bo